


Late Night Temptations

by shewhoguards



Category: Labyrinth (1986)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-29
Updated: 2016-10-29
Packaged: 2018-08-27 19:44:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8414179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shewhoguards/pseuds/shewhoguards
Summary: It was a late night, one of too many late nights. The wind was howling in the trees, her husband was away on business, and her daughter was crying in the drawn out exhausted wail of a baby who could go all night.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rattlingbones](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rattlingbones/gifts).



Sarah was careful when she read her daughter fairy-tales. Perhaps she was only six months old but you never knew how much she was listening. Start with stories of princesses stolen away from their dreary lives by magic and.. well. That kind of path could lead to all kinds of places, not all of them good.

But then real life could lead all kinds of places too and while they were seldom as dramatically bad as being attacked by goblins, nor were they all perfect.

It was a late night, one of too many late nights. The wind was howling in the trees, her husband was away on business, and her daughter was crying in the drawn out exhausted wail of a baby who could go all night. Sarah had in vain rocked and patted, murmured soothing words, sang songs, and even left the child alone in the hope that she might fall into sleep of her own accord. None of it had worked, and as she went to lift the baby up out of her cot she was fighting tired tears of her own. Was an hour's sleep really so much to ask?

The baby, oblivious to her mother's weariness, arched her back and screamed. Sarah patted her robotically and stared out of the window at nothing.

"I wish--" she started, and stopped herself before she could go further, biting the words back. If she spoke them, she told herself, she would regret them.

But once you knew that the words were possible, that wishes were not only for horses, it was hard not to think of the possibilities.

Still, pacing the room with her daughter, it was difficult not to let her thoughts stray. She thought of a dead-end job - the only job that would allow her part-time hours to spend with her daughter. She thought of a husband who looked at his daughter with a worried kind of love, as though he hadn't realised she wouldn't come with a manual, and who always slept through the nightly wakings. She thought of family who always promised they would babysit, but somehow never at times it would actually help her.

Almost against her will she thought of a time when magic had been real, and her words had been important. She thought of being looked at in a way that terrified her and yet also made her feel special. She thought, most importantly, of someone who could enchant babies so they never cried at all.

She was very tired. The words seemed to come without her prompting. "I wish--" she started, "I wish the goblins would come and take us aw--"

Something crashed against the window. She screamed, the rest of the sentence unspoken. That night, Sarah slept in the same room as her daughter.

Years passed. As everyone had promised, the baby learned to sleep through the night. Blessed with a half-decent night's sleep when she went to work, the dead-end job turned out to be less dead-end after all. And the next one she took, the one with longer hours when her daughter was at school, that one turned out to be even better. And her husband, after a strongly worded talk on how way way to learn how to handle babies was to actually try it, became his daughter's biggest fan. Life got better. If you could make it through the screaming, life almost always did.

Even so, even celebrating her golden wedding anniversary, raising her glass at her daughter’s eighteenth, and accepting her promotion to company manager, Sarah never could say whether she was glad or sorry whether she had never been able to finish her wish.

Of course, the owl at the window couldn’t possibly comment.


End file.
